Following Canada’s involvement in the Suez Crisis, many Canadians embraced peacekeeping as a potent symbol and a significant way for Canada to aid countries in conflict. Since then, Canada has been involved in operations around the world. Over the decade that followed the Suez Crisis, Canada contributed forces to missions around the world. Some deployments were short term; others, like Cyprus, lasted decades. By the late 1960s, the challenges of peacekeeping were revealed. Peacekeeping could place conflicts on pause but could not produce lasting peace unless the underlying conflict was resolved, leading to long and costly commitments, not without risk. In other conflicts, such as the wars in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995, 1999), and during the genocide in Rwanda (1994), Canadian service members were confronted with no peace to keep and bore witness to atrocity and genocide. While domestic and political support for United Nations peacekeeping has changed since the Cold War, the Canadian Armed Forces were among the most respected peacekeepers in the world. Between 1948 and 1988, Canada contributed roughly 10 per cent of the total UN peacekeeping forces. In all, more than 125,000 Canadians have served in UN peace operations, and 130 Canadians have died during these operations |
